Will new SEC football divisions be as balanced as the past 20 years?

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- It's out with the old, in with the new in SEC football

Gone are six-team divisions that played out fairly evenly over 20 years. They're replaced by seven-team divisions -- Texas A&M in the West and Missouri in the East -- that raise new questions about division strength as SEC schedules become more unbalanced.

No one can predict the competitiveness of the divisions moving forward. For that matter, it's not even clear how long these divisions will stay intact. Outgoing LSU Chancellor Michael Martin said in June some schools still want different East and West divisional alignments and thinks it will be revisited in a year or two.

When asked if divisions could be revisited, SEC Executive Associate Commissioner Mark Womack said, "I think we'll continue to monitor all aspects of the conference scheduling process as we go forward." The SEC is in the process of building schedules for about the next four or five years after 2012, Womack said.

Adding Texas A&M was viewed by many people within the SEC as sensible in order to get into heavily-populated Texas, where football is wildly popular. Then came the obvious question: Who's No. 14?

There was no clear answer. At the time Texas A&M was added last fall, SEC officials and some members were even publicly saying the SEC could play a year or two with the clunky number of 13.

Ultimately, the majority of SEC presidents and chancellors supported Missouri, but divisions became a major sticking point. Auburn President Jay Gogue said last September he would be willing to have Auburn shift to the SEC East if that's what was necessary to make the SEC's expansion work.

The Birmingham News reported last fall that Alabama was among the minority that wanted the 14th school from the East Coast but would support Missouri if it joined the SEC East. Alabama's reasoning: Keep its annual cross-divisional rivalry game against Tennessee, and not watch Auburn move to the East and possibly grow its recruiting presence in talent-rich Florida and Georgia.

"Certainly there were a lot of discussions on a lot of different levels from the presidential level on down," Womack said without elaborating.

When it comes to expansion, geography has never been a strong suit for conferences, even the SEC. Otherwise, Auburn would have been in the East all these years and Vanderbilt in the West.

Putting Missouri in the East allowed the SEC to keep its six traditional football powers divided equally. Call them the Big 6: Alabama, Auburn and LSU in the West; Florida, Georgia and Tennessee in the East. Those six have won every SEC championship since 1976, when Kentucky shared the title with Georgia.

During the 20 years of six-team divisions, Florida won seven SEC titles, followed by LSU (four), Alabama (three), and Tennessee, Auburn and Georgia (two each). The next non-Big 6 school to come within a touchdown in the SEC Championship Game will be the first. Arkansas, Mississippi State and South Carolina are 0-5 in the SEC Championship Game, losing by an average of 23.4 points.

Putting Missouri in the East kept the Big 6 divided equally between the divisions.

"I think that was certainly a goal of the conference to try to keep intact the divisional alignment as we had it," Womack said. "Probably some of that thinking was the 20-year history that you had of the divisional opponents after the last time we expanded."

SEC divisions played out remarkably balanced since expansion in 1992. The East won two more SEC titles than the West; the West won one more head-to-head game against the East per year.

"It probably tells you things are cyclical in nature," Womack said. "If you charted it by five-year increments, you'd probably see a swing back and forth between the two divisions. What you want to see is some parity in both divisions over time."

On the other hand, putting Missouri in the East does create some historical competitive imbalances. Six of the SEC's top nine leaders in all-time winning percentage reside in the West, and four of the five bottom teams are in the East.

The West is decidedly stronger than the East in all-time SEC titles (47 to 35) and bowl winning percentage (.537 to .502). Teams in the West have made 57 more bowl appearances than their East counterparts.

However, moving Auburn from the West would have put four of the Big 6 schools in the East. That would have left Alabama and LSU as the only West teams with an SEC championship in the past 49 years.

Some fans and media outlets have wondered why divisions weren't simply changed to North and South. Besides presumably wanting to avoid Civil War connotations, the SEC would have created an even greater competitive imbalance.

The North: Arkansas, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt. The South: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Mississippi State and Texas A&M. Under that alignment, five Big 6 schools would be in the South.

So it's Arkansas-Missouri and South Carolina-Texas A&M as new permanent partners starting in 2013. And it's Missouri in the East, Texas A&M in the West.